SURREY’S John Parfitt, pictured, won the first ITF 1 Series doubles wheelchair tennis title of his career when pairing up with Israel’s Noam Gershony to win the quad doubles final at the Korea Open.
But there was disappointment for Britain’s number two seed David Phillipson, who was narrowly beaten by Japanese top seed and world No. 8 Satoshi Saida in the men’s singles final.
In the quad doubles final second seeds Parfitt and Gershony dropped the opening set against Malaysia’s Azman Hasan and Tzu-Hsuan Huang in a tie-break.
However, they came back strongly to wrap up the contest 6-7(6), 6-2, (10-4) after a deciding champions tie-break, with Parfitt sealing match point with a half-volley drop shot.
Meanwhile, Phillipson put up a promising effort in his first ever ITF1 Series final.
After a confident start Phillipson found things difficult and Saida broke in the ninth game and then held serve to close out the set.
It was a different story in the early part of the second set as Phillipson charged out of the blocks.
With his backhand slice doing the damage, he hit winner after winner en route to a 4-1 lead.
However, Phillipson was unable to maintain his level and Saida began to claw back the deficit, an array of confidently placed shots eventually seeing him through to a narrow 6-4, 7-5 victory.
Phillipson is now one of several British players moving on to next week’s Daegu Open, another ITF 1 Series tournament in Korea, which begins on Tuesday.
MEANWHILE, at the Atlanta Open in the USA, Britain’s Adam Field saw his tournament come to an end in the quarter-finals.
Fourth seed Field faced a tough task as he met American world No. 4 and second seed Nick Taylor.
